RFC Editor Reporting

September 2013

1.  Monthly Summary

The following numbers represent the August 2013 statistics for documents moving through the RFC Editor queue.

Submitted 31

Published 23

Moved to EDIT 33

Number of Documents in Queue per State at EOM (as of 1 October 2013)

EDIT 23

RFC-EDITOR 8

AUTH48 10

AUTH48-DONE 0

IANA 1

AUTH 2

IESG 1

REF 1

MISSREF 37

2.  Submission and Publication Rates

While there were 23 Internet-Drafts approved for publication in October 2011, there were an additional 25 released from MISSREF. This means that a total of 48 documents entered the EDIT queue in October. Unfortunately, due to a flaw in the original design of our queue reporting, once the large group of MISSREF documents were released into EDIT, the time-in-state for the EDIT state became skewed, as the 2nd, 3rd, etc. generation MISSREFs were not originally counted as being in MISSREF (they were mistakenly counted as being in EDIT -- this was cleaned up a bit later).

The trend of releasing documents from MISSREF continued in the last quarter of the year, as 10 more documents were released from MISSREF in December. So, while the stats show that 25 documents entered the queue, 35 entered the EDIT queue.

In May 2012, there were 29 Internet-Drafts approved for publication, but an additional 12 were released from MISSREF and moved to EDIT. This means that 41 documents moved into EDIT during May 2012. Additionally, at least 5 documents were released from MISSREF into EDIT during June, which means that 26 documents were released into the EDIT queue.

Documents are continuing to be released from MISSREF, as another 11 were released from MISSREF into the EDIT queue in July. That is, while 36 were approved for publication, 47 documents were released into the EDIT queue. In September 2012, no documents were released from MISSREF, but the average page count of documents moved to EDIT increased significantly, with an average page size of 37 pgs/doc (though average page counts throughout the year are lower – approximately 25 pgs/doc).

While 2011 was a record high for document submissions (364), submissions in 2012 (323) slowed a bit. In both years, the RFC Editor was able to outpace the submission rate, publishing 390 and 338 RFCs, respectively. (This is possible because of the documents that have been released from MISSREF throughout the year.)

In March 2013, the Independent Submissions Editor (ISE) began to use the Datatracker to track documents submitted for consideration as an RFC. Once the Datatracker fully met the ISE’s needs, the ISE-related documents that had not been approved for publication were removed from the RFC Editor queue – a total of 36 documents were removed from the queue.

The following table shows the average submissions and publications per month on an annual basis:

Year / Submissions / Publications
2008 / 27 / 26
2009 / 27 / 24
2010 / 29 / 30
2011 / 30 / 33
2012 / 27 / 28

In the last quarter of 2010, the IAOC provided additional funding to support a part-time editor. With this extra help, we’ve seen increased production numbers and shorter times in RFC-Ed-timed states, and we’re seeing the RPC keeping pace with the rate of document submissions.

There are a number of factors that affected the processing times since 2009; a few of significant importance are noted here:

a.  November 2008 – RFC 5378 was published, defining a new copyright notice for RFCs.

·  This created the “pre-5378 problem.”

·  It also caused non-IETF stream documents to be put on hold, as it did not account for the Independent Submission and IRTF streams.

b.  February 2009 – An RFC 5378-fix was approved and announced, introducing new text to serve as a work-around for people experiencing the "pre-5378 problem."

c.  September 2009 – An updated TLP was announced to resolve issues surrounding the inclusion of the BSD license in RFCs.

d.  December 2009 – TLP 4.0 was announced, freeing the non-IETF stream documents for publication.

e.  December 2009 – RFC 5741 was published, defining new header and boilerplate material for all streams.

f.  November 2009-January 2010 – RFC Editor focused on transition from USC/ISI to AMS.

g.  January 2010 – RFC Editor model implemented as defined in RFC 5620.

h.  March 2010 – Incumbent RSE (Bob Braden) passed baton to Transitional RSE (Glenn Kowack).

i.  March 2011 – Transitional RSE passed baton to Acting RSE (Olaf Kolkman).

j.  October - December 2011 – At least 35 documents released from MISSREF into EDIT queue.

k.  December 2011 – Transitional RSE preparing to hand baton off to RSE (Heather Flanagan).

In March 2012, the RFC Editor added time in state to the database, so that stats would be generated directly from the database (instead of through a multi-step, multi-file process. As such, data post March 2012 is more accurate then previous data.

In the following pages, the graphs below show that RFC publication is typically lower during the months of November-January, which we attribute to the holidays and vacation season. The first set of graphs show the annual submission and publication rates for RFCs over the past 3 years.

Annual Submission and Publication Rates

3.  Queue Processing Times

The subsequent figures show the processing times of documents as they move through the RFC Editor queue. The diagrams show document counts, page counts, and average times in queue per state (EDIT, RFC-EDITOR, and AUTH48).

There was an increase in the size of the EDIT queue over the last quarter of 2010, as members of the RFC Production staff invested time on other developments and because of the usual slow period at the end of the year (see Section 2). An additional part-time editor was brought on to help with the slowly building queue and in anticipation of the expected burst before AD turnover.

Note that there is a ripple effect, as spikes in document and page counts may be due to clusters of documents moving through the queue together. A cluster does not move to the next state until the entire set is ready to be moved. You will often see bursts in EDIT, then RFC-EDITOR, and finally PUB, as the set of documents move through the states together to publication.

Generally speaking, the more documents there are in the queue, the longer it takes for documents to move through the queue.

Note: the huge spike starting around week 42 in the “Time in EDIT State, Mean & Median” figure is because of the skewed data mentioned in Section 2. The skewed data will continue to exist until EDIT has been completed on all of newly released MISSREF documents (i.e., they have moved to RFC-EDITOR state).


EDIT State 2013

RFC-EDITOR State 2013

AUTH48 State 2013

AUTH48-DONE State 2013

In July 2012, the RFC Editor introduced a new state with the following definition:

AUTH48-DONE = Final approvals are complete

4.  SLA Compliance Levels

The chart is a measure of our performance levels. The following graph shows the total number of documents published per month and the time those documents spent in an RFC-Editor-timed state (EDIT and RFC-EDITOR states). The goal is to have an RFC Editor time of fewer than 6 weeks.

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